Today is David Bowie’s birthday. In honor of that fact, I’m going to reveal a little something about myself:

The movie Labyrinth came out when I was eight years old. I saw it in the theater and was blown away. That movie affects me to this day on many, many levels. Not the least of these effects stem from the fact that there, in that darkened theater, at eight years old, looking at Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King, I felt physical attraction for the first time.

Intellectually, I thought he was beautiful. I had been able to identify “pretty” and “ugly” for some time, of course, and to express my preferences. This was the first time, however, my body responded to that beauty. It was a strange awareness—a tingling and a catch of the breath.

Thus began, I suppose, my lifelong love affair with men bearing that seductive whiff of androgyny and moral ambiguity.

“Am I a good man, or a bad man?”

Come to bed, my lovely, and I’ll tell you in the morning.

-M.

Happy Birthday, David Bowie. Thank you for your beauty and your art.

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About M. Ashley

Essayist and poet, my work has been rejected by some of the finest journals in America. Fortunately, it also gets accepted from time to time and has appeared in equally fine journals such as Word Riot, Inlandia, Brew City Magazine, and SageWoman among others.. In 2002, I was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize for Vanderbilt University.
For no good reason, I possess an unnecessarily dark humor which is why being third generation California Inland Empirian delights me so. My gods are weird. I once received $350 for writing a smartassed essay on “why the wise use of water is important in my daily life”. I am undoubtedly the Greek god Hermes’ special snowflake. I’m pretty sure I got into college via a series of fortuitous clerical errors.
When I had to grow up and get a real job, I decided against it and stayed a writer. I have worked many odd—and I mean odd—jobs to support my habit: Commercial writer for country music hopefuls, resume massager, WalMart fitting room attendant and switchboard operator, telephone psychic.